CI Higher Education Blog

CI Higher Education Blog provides our clients with current and upcoming digital trends, news, and insights across higher education on a variety of digital topics including social media, development apps, campaigns, user experience best practices and other hot-button educational issues.

Alumni Associations Spark Participation and Engagement for Valentine’s Day

Colleges and universities are continually looking for ways to spark alumni participation, and Valentine’s Day 2018 is no exception. This month, schools took advantage of the commercial holiday to connect with alumni through personal stories, to enter in sweepstakes and giveaways and to prompt participation in alumni associations. Through email, social media posts and public alumni site updates, schools are creatively reaching their graduates. OftheAlumni Monitor coverage group, Wellesley College, the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan stand out with creative approaches to garnering alumni association engagement and participation on social media.

This year, Wellesley College reached alumni through email, sending a Valentine’s Day message to supporters. The email encouraged alumni to like/follow the college on its Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages and included the corresponding links. The college also promoted a giveaway to encourage further social media engagement, drawing from a pool of alumni who like all three social media channels and offering the winner a $50 gift card to the Wellesley Bookstore. Wellesley’s approach reaches alumni directly, while creatively sparking participation and activity on its social media profiles.

Wellesley College Be Our Valentine Email Promotion

The University of Maryland encouraged alumni to share their personal experiences with the school on Valentine’s Day and prompted grads to join its alumni association by offering a discount on the standard rate. Like Wellesley, the university reached out through an alumni email, asking readers to “fall in love with Maryland all over again” by joining its alumni association with a promotional $250 discount. In its effort to connect with alumni’s personal experiences, the university also offered a promotion for alumni to share their own University of Maryland story on social media, using the #TerpLove4Life hashtag. When alumni post their story on social media, they are entered to win a $500 prize package at The Hotel at the University of Maryland. The email includes links to a special Fall in Love with Maryland page that features giveaway details and shared alumni stories. With its discount promotion and giveaway, the University of Maryland creatively connects with its graduates to spark alumni association and social media participation.

University of Maryland Fall in Love with Maryland Email Promotion

The University of Michigan was very active on social media this Valentine’s Day, using the #ValentinesDay hashtag and posting a series of holiday-themed pictures and videos. On Twitter, the university took the holiday to promote its reusable water bottle product, asking users to “end your relationship with single-use plastic water bottles.” Among its other posts, Michigan is unique in its efforts to promote a larger cause for good on Valentine’s Day.

University of Michigan Valentine’s Day Twitter Post

Through social media, giveaways and email, colleges and universities continually display their creativity in sparking alumni engagement and participation during the holidays, a trend Alumni Monitor plans to track as 2018 continues.